


Flesh & Blood

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, But Bedelia is a vampire, F/M, Hannibal is still a cannibal, Light Dom/sub, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5117897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s always known that Bedelia keeps a secret, though the secret Bedelia hints at is stranger than anything he ever dreamt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh & Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobbieTurner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobbieTurner/gifts).



Bedelia stands beneath the portrait in the gallery. Her aristocratic profile matches that of the unknown Renaissance woman point for point, and Hannibal feels an otherworldly chill travel up his spine like a ghostly caress.

“The resemblance is remarkable,” he says, carefully watching her face.

“Is it?” Bedelia replies, and it may be just his imagination, but there is a playful taunt packed into those two small words.

“This woman whose name has been lost to history wears your face. And you don’t seem the least bit surprised.”

Bedelia’s eyes travel around the gallery, bored and unimpressed, though it is the first time he has taken her to the Uffizi. “I’m not surprised. Not at all,” she tells him enigmatically, before gliding away.

He’s always known that Bedelia keeps a secret, though the secret Bedelia hints at is stranger than anything he ever dreamt.

*****

Hannibal returns home early one day from the library. The smell of raw, coppery blood greets him unexpectedly immediately upon crossing the threshold. Equally surprising is the sight of Bedelia, sprawled languidly in an armchair, sipping from a goblet full of maroon liquid too viscous to be wine, a cooler of freshly donated blood at her feet.

For a moment he thinks he’s finally broken her, that she has decided to join him at his table rather than be served upon it. But then he remembers the portrait and the inhumanly sweet taste of her—he had mistakenly chalked it up to the oysters. Dark, half-whispered stories from his childhood come back to him and he finds himself alarmed and intrigued, confronted with something beyond human understanding.

“You’re home early,” is all Bedelia says, quaffing AB negative as if it were a glass of her favorite Chateau Lafitte.

He sets down his briefcase and removes his coat, joining her numbly in a chair opposite. “They were testing the fire alarms at the Capponi today. It interfered with my concentration.”

Bedelia looks at him. Her skin is glowing; the wrinkle lines that had begun to appear as of late around her mouth and eyes have miraculously vanished, leaving her looking ageless. “My contacts in the Italian underworld finally came through. I’d offer you some,” she kicks the blue plastic cooler with one of her stiletto heels, “but I don’t think you take it raw. And I’m afraid I already finished all the A negative. I’ve been very thirsty, you understand.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” he declines politely. Hannibal finds himself unable to do more than stare in amazement as Bedelia polishes off the last of the goblet and picks up another packet of blood, sipping at it like a child’s juice box. Her eyes are an unnatural luminous blue and her lips are very,  _very_  red.

“You’ve taken off your person suit, Bedelia.” It is the first observation that comes to mind.

She smiles slyly. “Yes, it’s made of much finer stuff than yours. But then again, I’ve had longer to perfect it.” Bedelia drains the blood from the packet and tosses it aside with a contented sigh, brushing blood from her lips. Hannibal is torn between terror and arousal. “Tell me, what have you deduced about me?”

It’s a refreshing return to the cat and mouse parlor game of their therapy sessions; a game Hannibal has always enjoyed. “I think you were already old when the Renaissance was young. I think you possess a gruesome appetite that both compliments and outpaces my own. I think you require human blood for survival, and that for reasons I cannot fathom, you have been denying yourself sustenance since we arrived in Florence.”

“All very true. But let’s call a spade a spade for once, Hannibal: I’m a vampire.” Bedelia leans back in her chair and crosses her long elegant legs. “How does that make you feel?” she asks, mock-therapeutically.

“Intrigued.”

“And?” she probes.

“Afraid,” he admits.

“Fear is such a rare emotion for you, Hannibal.” Bedelia smiles slowly and rises from her chair, slinking over to him with the predatory grace of a jungle cat. “You intrigue me, too. I’ve never met a mortal like you, not in all my centuries. And I was on intimate terms with the Borgias. You play at being a demon, but I actually am one.”

Her voice makes him shiver with longing; he can’t decide whether to run from her or grovel at her feet. Her fingers begin to play with his hair, stroking him like a pet, and he struggles to form a coherent thought; “Why do you so disdain my habits? They are no different from your own.”

Bedelia laughs darkly and stops playing with his hair. “My kind have always looked down upon flesh-eaters. The  _zombi,_ the  _were_ —they are lesser orders, mindless slaves to appetite.”

He bristles at the implication. “But you are not? We could have hunted and dined together, you and I, anytime you wished. Yet you prefer this…bland antisepsis?” He gestures toward the donated blood.

Bedelia looks down on him pityingly. “The blood of the unwilling is as appetizing to me as a McDonald’s Big Mac is to you: easily obtained, unhealthy, empty and unsatisfying. The blood of the willing is so much more…potent. Though I admit that this,” she says, palming a packet full with donated blood, “is the equivalent of brown rice.”

“You’ve been resisting your instincts.”

“I haven’t fed on an unwilling victim since they invented the printing press. One of the reasons for my remarkable longevity.”

“All of the business with your patient…your denials…I don’t understand.”

“Whimsy, Hannibal. All of this time you thought you were playing games with me, but you had it all backward…you’re my plaything, I’m not yours.” 

He feels himself growing feverish with rage. “I might not be able to kill you. But I could still eat you.”

Bedelia giggles, laughs so hard that tears pool in her eyes. She waltzes into the kitchen and he follows dumbly behind her. She fetches his favorite knife. With a broad grin across her face, she slices the blade against her arm. It fails to so much as scratch her flawless porcelain skin. “You’d have a very difficult time of it.” She hands the knife back to him, its fine serrated edge dulled. “You’ll need to get this resharpened.”

For the first time in his life, Hannibal feels himself completely outfoxed and undone. He grasps at the only thread of meaning left to him. “You have been testing me. I want you to know I am ready.”

Bedelia arches a perfect brow. “Ready for what?”

He straightens his tie and smooths his vest. “To join you. To become your immortal consort.”

For a second he fears the creature that calls herself Bedelia is going to laugh at him again; instead her eyes look sad. “You would toss away what is left of your humanity so easily. You have no idea what you are asking for.”

“Don’t I?”

She lays a soft hand on his heart and looks at him with infinite regret. “You grieve the loss of one Mischa. I have had countless. So many that I can't remember the last time I bothered. I abandoned my heart to live in my head long ago.”

He pulls her close and breathes in her scent; bergamot and blood, intoxicating. “Turn me and you need not face eternity alone anymore.”

Bedelia shakes her head, taking his chin between her fingers affectionately, tracing the stubble. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, Hannibal. Life eternal isn’t a gift I can give to you.”

“But in the stories…”

“The stories are just stories, half-truths and mostly lies. I have immortal sisters, but no brothers. Something happens at the genetic level that prevents those in possession of a Y chromosome from surviving the transformation. Life eternal is a very exclusive club and Ladies’ Only, I’m afraid,” she explains with a shrug.

The realization dawns on him, ironic and horrifying. “If I am not to be your consort…I am to be your food.”

Bedelia wraps her hands around his neck, wriggles against him, warm and playful. He finds himself getting instantly, painfully hard. “Only if you wish it, Hannibal.”

He’s drawn to her like a magnet, unable to pull away, his objections worn away to nothing. “Why would I wish it? What possible gain is there for me in such an arrangement?’

“You would have my immortal love and protection. I would give you a pleasure unlike any you have ever known.” The fingers of her left hand begin to play with the short hairs near his neck while the right begins to unbutton his vest. Her hand slips inside his shirt to touch the bare flesh near his heart. Bedelia’s skin is heated, like a snake that has sunned itself on a rock, unnaturally warm. “You only know how to take, let me teach you how to give, Hannibal.”

Her sweet scent overpowers him, almost hypnotic, leaving no thought, no desire in his head except Bedelia. He is enthralled. “Pleasure?” he asks, half-gone.

Bedelia draws him down for a kiss, tender and slow, before ripping open his lip with a fang-like incisor. She tastes fresh blood with the very tip of her tongue and he moans, knees buckling beneath him. He’s curious, helpless to resist her. He whips aside his bow tie and unbuttons his shirt from neck to navel, baring himself to her in submission.

Bedelia hops up on the butcher block island and he bends to offer her his neck. She kisses him slowly, lips trailing from clavicle to collar bone, tonguing the tender inside of his neck before sinking her teeth in hard. She drinks of him and he is overcome with blissful, mind-blowing oblivion, headier than a drug, sweeter than murder. The teacup comes together and he is in a place without pain or suffering or loneliness. Bedelia holds him, feeds on him, and he is as content as a babe in his mother’s arms.

Bedelia breaks from him. “No,” he moans. “Don’t stop. Please.”

Bedelia wipes her bloodied lips with the back of her hand. “You’re very sweet. I could drain you dry.”

“But you won’t,” he says.

Bedelia cuddles him close to her breast and he whimpers. “Not today,” she tells him gently.

**Author's Note:**

> Bedelia as a vampire kind of makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. Happy Halloween!


End file.
